London politics
fromwww.bbc.com
12 hours agoBrothers on trial for murder, 40 years ago
Two brothers are on trial for the 1984 murder of a civil servant during a spree of violence against gay men.
George Orwell was dying when he wrote 1984 in the late 1940s on the desolate Isle of Jura in Scotland's Inner Hebrides. Tuberculosis ravaged his body, and typing thousands of words a day only weakened him further. His skin flaked off. Blisters burst across his throat. Feverish and emaciated, he endured painful procedures to support his failing lungs, but the treatments were too late. Eventually, in 1950, Orwell succumbed to the disease.